YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Murphy

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72
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2016-04-25
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2016-04-25
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Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “I always try to do other interesting things. Politics is great, but I have a friend in Canada, Tom Long, who's a great politician up there who says the greatest thing about politics, which is try other stuff because it'll always be there. You can always come back to it. So I'm pretty much in the other stuff business now, but I'll continue to opine and irritate Trump supporters on Twitter and do a little television at NBC and try to be of voice as we rebuild the party because I'm a conservative. I believe in our ideas. And I think if we get smart about it, we can win and we should.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It's the ultimate growing up experience. You care about other things and you politics is a great adrenaline ride in your 20s and 30s and then the 40s you start to kind of have doubts and I got married late in life and I have a wife that puts up with it and a good life. Yeah, we have our little daughter Audrey. I came home the other day and she was in a little Hillary t-shirt somebody. My wife, of course, is a Democrat. So we're in counseling now over that. If it were Chicago, I could register her to vote at three and vote her Republican to get even. But no, it's been great. I've never had a happier life”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, yeah, and house, we're lose some. We should never lose. I don't think it'll cost us the majority, but then we should get them back. And I want to make sure, at least in my tiny role in any of this, is that we don't learn the wrong lessons from our off-year comeback.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “And let's arrest them all. And that does not build the new conservatism we're going to need. And I think conservatism is eternal. Our ideas are strong. But we've got to get back in the solution business at the American middle class resonates to and then begin the path back. And I think it'll begin with the governors where we have been very successful still. But it'll be a fight because we're going to have some dead cat bouncing in 2018 because we're going to win some stuff for free that we never should have lost. But thanks to Trump, if it's Trump or perhaps Cruz, we will. So we're going to be given trophies on that.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Wisconsin, I mean, it is tough. Portman and Swing State, Ohio. Mark Kirk, you're here in Illinois. Yeah, Mark is in particularly hard trouble and a very hard state, good senator, but sometimes you can't be the mastery of your own fate in these presidential years. So it's going to be really tough, but I think you'll see a lot of the focus of the party of fighting like hell. And I think we're holding to the house. But to your larger question of what do we do? So we have the mathematician priest fight. My belief is if we really wind up in a pile of rubble, I am not at all sure a Hillary Clinton presidency will be that successful. And there are a lot of politics she's going to have to do to appease the left and everything. We'll see how that all works out. We're going to have to get back into the idea business again. I mean, we really came to power in the late 70s because we had the reform agenda that middle-class people believed in economically and the middle class, the parties argue on the remedies, but it's been squeezed to death in real wages. The place America has in the world in security. We're going to have to come back with an argument. Because for too long, our argument is that...”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah. In an axe fight, I'm betting on McCain. But yeah, he's got a real race. Other people do. But, you know, some of our folks in Blue States are going to have that trouble at the top of the ticket are good candidates. Kelly Ayott in New Hampshire, Toomey is a very good candidate and is working like Helen, Pennsylvania. So, you know, the Florida Open seat, we don't know there's a primary to sort out. But let's put it this way. Historically, If the patterns of the past repeat, and we have a wipeout at the top of the ticket, guys in blue states to begin with are going to have a hell of a hard time. I don't think it's impossible. I think politics is changing. Things are more delinked now.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “All that coherence. That is the question of the future. I call it the battle between the mathematicians and the priests. You got mathematicians like me saying, well, here's, you know, here's what we need to ever have any power. So if you think the conservative movement is not academic and we actually ought to go try to do stuff, this is how we do it. And you've got the priests saying, you need faith. You need faith. You don't have enough faith. Anybody got a stake time? Let's burn a mathematician. And right now, the preach side is winning. And I think there'll be a reckoning after the election because we could lose the Senate. We're definitely fighting for our life there.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So it could be a perfect storm when an unelectable Republican could somehow win. I mean, Hillary's going to have to build a third wing of the White House just for the ethical blind spot, which in my view is about as big as a semi. That'll be an issue. But the demography that wind behind her is so strong. And Cruz has so many positioning problems. Plus his cruiseness, which is, you know, we'll see how that develops. Which is, you know, in Washington, he'll need to double his secret service protection the minute he's nominee just from fellow senators. We will see. But yeah, I'm very depressed about it. It's heartbreaking because we could win if we had a candidate. And I'm not sure we do.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “We're set up, our short term incentives in the party, in the primary electorate, because remember, you got, say, $128 million general election voters. Last time you had 19 million primary voters. So in that subset, the incentives are to do a lot of stuff to alienate who you need in the big one. They're not connected. The demography has changed enough that you can have a legitimate debate on your side on the Democrats that a general election in a presidential year with all the turnout is almost a big Democratic primary. You can make that argument, which is fairly new. And the Republican side, people who think that are delusional, you know, the general election looks nothing like a Republican primary, but our incentives push these guys into places that are really hard. Now, I think Cruz is a smart guy and a cynic. So I'm not sure what kind of road to Damascus thing he'll try to do if he's the nominee to try to become possible in a general election. And Hillary's a deeply flawed candidate.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “This is a year to never say impossible, but I'm taking bets and I'm paying huge odds Trump alienates college educated white women and Latinos. I mean, it's like he was built in a lab to alienate them, particularly women. Which is the weird thing about it.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Distance second, but he'll have one states. He will have more natural organic supporters on the floor, I believe. And I think you're going to see some of the establishment folks giving up on the math after maybe giving Caseka ballot and saying better to lose with crews rather than lose a Trump and have the cruise faction back in a few years saying, well, we didn't nominate a real conservative and a million people didn't show up.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Some will still be stuck. Florida, where Trump's got 99, it's three ballots they're stuck. So not every state is free after the first one. But the natural dynamic of the convention will be more cruise friendly ideologically than anybody else. And he'll have the credibility of having run and came in second, stronger claims.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, and Indiana's tricky, there's no 50 minimum. So you win a district with 34% or win state, you get all the delegates in that district or statewide. So it's almost winner-take-all plurality. And Nebraska, and you combine those two, that's 90 delegates. And Maryland, these things next week are proportional, except, of course, for Pennsylvania, where all but the statewide guys are, you know, double secret Philly handshake. They're for you. We're C. And historically, the Christian conservatives and kind of the old grassroots anti-establishment establishment guys are very good at the delegate caucuses where the bodies are picked. And Cruz is amplifying that and doing a good job of it. So my guess is if Trump can get to over 1,200, he'll find the next 30. If he's down around 1,175, I don't know if he can do the 50 or not. We'll find out. I'm not so sure. On a second ballot, I think he'll drop a lot.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Point, doesn't it? Which is No, no. I mean, look at Walker, look at Jeb, look at Marco. I would say here's what I think the convention dynamic will be. Trump's going to Trump could get there now if he can really run the table after the future.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “He did beat Ruby on Manhattan. I was joking that winning in Manhattan is not normally the calling card in a Republican convention.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Old saying about it's either Napoleon or Stalin, depending on which version of the story. I go with the Stalin one because it's a funnier image, but Stalin's sitting there throwing people in the gulag, firing squads, and you get the letter from Rome every other month and another letter from the Pope, and you'd read it, dear Stalin, quit shooting everybody, and he'd crumple it up and throw it in the garbage can and say, how many tanks does the Pope have? So, Kasich has everything but delegates. And he'll make an argument on the floor that he's the winner and he'll be right. And he'll shoot up in delegates. On a second ballot if we get there, a bunch of regulars will go to Kasich. He'll double, but I still don't think he'll be able to get to a majority. I hope I'm wrong about this. If I were a delegate, I'd be for Kasich.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I'm trying to find a way to see a path where at the presidential level we're not because it's heartbreaking. It's bad for the Democratic Party and it's horrible for us. But I think Trump would be a total disaster as nominee. He alienates every swing voter you need. There aren't enough pissed off old white guys to win. And Cruz for years has sold a myth that there's this secret vote that if we don't nominate a conservative, they're all on Jupiter, but they're going to, millions of voters are going to appear. That is empirically false. We have data on this. You can prove it. So, you know, we will see. Now, of the two of them, I'm for cruise over Trump. I think a Trump nomination would be a disaster for the country. I think a cruise nomination would merely be a fiasco for the Republican Party. And let's have the argument. I mean, two cruises credit.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Well, I provide value, and they reward that. They're pretty hardcore in their calculation. But we're very proud of how we ran the super PAC on the governance side. I had major donors on a committee that approved all the expenditures, all the contracts. And so it's kind of, I'm tempted to say, yeah, I'm going down to the Gulfstream dealership tomorrow just because I know it makes heads explode around my industry. But the truth is I'm proud of how we governed it. And we're given a bunch of money back because we were pretty prudent managers. So we're going to get refund checks out in about three weeks.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “They didn't want it. They did not want low energy was not about energy. If Trump had Jeb's schedule, he'd be hospitalized after two days. It was about his civilized manner. That he's not screaming about electric fences on the border. It was a temperament thing. And Jeb's never going to change that. And he said he'd never be a grievance candidate. And that's what they're looking for. And, you know, it's a free country. They get what they're looking for. We'll see what happens. And then as far as well-heeled, My little secret is I get paid too much in corporate America and I've been paid well in statewide campaigns. And presidential stuff, I tend to work cheap. I did the whole McCann campaign in 2005. I want to say parents.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “So he's gotten to his vote that responds to his message, but he hasn't gotten much farther than that. And that's why I still think he'll be in peril of getting to enough delegates to win the nomination. We're no a lot more after Indiana on the third. Now, as far as our 100 million, I kind of have a two-part answer to that. First, I don't apologize at all because we raised over $100 million for the super pack because we could. And because you put Jeb Bush in a room with some really smart people who care a lot about the country and are looking at who to back and you put Walker in that room, you put Rubio in that room. You put Huckabee in that room, you put crews in that room. Trump will never even be invited into the room because they know him. They think he's a fraud. And they were for Jeb because he thought he was a right guy to be president, right temperament, right vision, smart guy. And that resulted in dollars. So we have this terrific amplifier. We had a better opportunity to put our message out than anybody else.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Right. But if you take New York out, his home state where he triumphed, and I was wrong, I thought the anti-Trump guys would hammer him in Western New York. I thought Kasich would come a little more into life than just Manhattan. And I thought he'd come in in the low 40s there. So I was very surprised. I mean, after Wisconsin, that was my wrong, totally wrong prediction, and I'll own it. Trump's average in everywhere where he hasn't been the tabloid king for decades has been under 50.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, I think that's more of an anomaly, but I'll try to give you at least my view. We're fine out at the end of this how it all turns out. I think in the case of Trump, here's what my Hollywood pals would call a pre-aware title. That's why they make movies called Battleship or Iron Man 17. It's cheaper to market something that's already famous. And even, you know, when you're on NBC primetime for 10 years, even if you're only teaching Gary Bussey, you're on for 14 years, even if he's only teaching Gary Busey how to work a snow cone machine, you're famous and famous worth a lot. And then digital media has been great at amplifying them. It's free stamps for a famous guy, Twitter. It's been great.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Idealist and presidential primaries and the statewide game is calculating as any political consultant. But I'd always rather have the long shot guy that I think ought to be the leader of the party and hopefully the president, then I would the sure thing. Because the sure thing would be either a Trump or a cruise. So now we've got Stalingerad between two guys that are going to hand the White House to Hillary Clinton in the general election. That's the big outcome here.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So we looked at it as can we dominate our lane to get in the ring with Cruz? And the thing we didn't see coming was Trump. And we also didn't see that the populist conservative movement wing of the party, the Tea Party wing, would be large enough to accommodate kind of one and a half candidates, Cruz, Trump, and the Trump would have plenty of appeal to the regulars just based on style. And so we were fighting for a relatively smaller share of the vote with Scott Walker and Kasich and Marco Rubio from our home state who decided to run. And a few others. So it was a tough situation. And we always knew that we had this gap between the perception of invincibility and the reality of the primary, but we did the honorable thing. You go fight. You try. And, you know, I don't apologize for any of it. As I say, I'm a wild.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Jeb was, look, it has to be done, it has to be tried. And so let's do it. We can raise a bunch of money at least. So we'll be able to have the resources to make an argument. And so off we went. But the DC world, matter of fact, it made me incredibly nervous. The more Washington said we couldn't lose, the less sleep I'd get because I've made a career out of kind of betting the downside of conventional wisdom because I think in DC particularly it's totally disconnected from the reality. That's why I'm glad I live in California”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Well, we knew they were wrong, but that's not something you advertise. I mean, it's interesting. Jeb's son, Sally Bradshaw, dear old friend of mine, it was Jeb's chief of staff and campaign manager. We all had dinner while he was thinking about running. And when his thinking about running decision was never very political. It was always policy, what could I get done, et cetera, et cetera? That's who he is. But we started talking about the politics. And we all agree it would be a long shot. I thought it would come down to cruising somebody. I was referring him. Well, you were right about that. Well, he's the McGovern of the party. He resonates to a lot of the core base primary voters.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “His tweets on the Trump thing are priceless. And I couldn't do it. So Tim Russard called me up and say, hey, I don't really like to put political consultants on Meet the Press. You know, they steal stuff and it brings to order the thing down a little bit, but you have this problem with telling the truth. You don't do the talking points. And if you're not going to do anything, why don't you do a little of that? And so that's kind of how I got into the TV pundit world. It used to be on Crossfire and that sort of stuff, but I hadn't really done it seriously. And I stayed in touch with both guys, and they both took it really well. You know, they thought it was kind of the honorable thing to do. And so I had the kind of uncomfortable situation of watching a campaign I would have liked to participate in.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And McCain had told me after 2000 it was kind of lightning in a bottle and he wasn't going to run again. I remember we were at his porch having some vodkas. The sun went down and that was one time. Well, McCain called me up and said, what the hell? I'm old. Eventually I'll die. I'm going to run again. The country needs leadership. And I love McCain. And I like Romney. I love Romney too. So I thought I've now got an ethical dilemma. And the normal thing to do, unfortunately, in political consulting is to, you know. make it an auction or something, but I would never work against Mitt and I would never work against John. So I called him both up and said, Mitt, I can't do this anymore. And John, I can't join. And I had a great dinner with Weaver and Mark Salter, who's the other Kane's alter. Yeah, he was a wonderful, wonderful human being and a great guy.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Well, I had what a lot of my friends slash clients in politics call the extremely rare occurrence of an ethical dilemma in the political consulting world. I had done Mitt Romney's campaign for governor of Massachusetts. And about halfway through that, we started thinking about a presidential campaign. We started organizing one. We set up something called the Commonwealth Pack and a talented operative named Trent Weiss Cup and Mitt's old business partner Bob White. We had to get Bob to trend in the Gucci for some boots. And we've sent him out to Iowa County to county meetings. You know, we started the early stuff.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “I don't know. I think a McCain with his sales trimmed a little bit is still a boat with much fuller sails than the average GOP candidate for president. So I don't think he ever lost his McCain this. I think if there was an inflection point from it, it was when he picked Sarah Palin because that sent a signal of cynicism, I think, at least to some people, which was toxic to his brand. But fundamentally, why didn't”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “They were all there. I've got this great black and white photo. I'm a photography guy, too, so I used to take all this cinema photography of all these things, of kind of the half circle of them all packed in.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Now, doing casing, yeah, very good consultant and a good friend of mine. So McCain and I would go into our shtick every once in a while, or we'd have Todd Harris, who was one of our traveling press secretaries, you know, bring up Italian TV and then he'd get interviewed about his underwear for an hour and a half and great lovers of the Italian cinema. So we had ways to kind of go on autopilot to get a breather from the New York Times, but they were...”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “He'd get irritated by it because he might have thought like we'd get a new reporter on and wanted to get noticed and might have taken a paraphrase that was a little aggressive and amplified. That would be irritating. And to be honest, I'd be back there for a lot of it because most of the campaign leadership, particularly Weaver and I would travel. John Weaver. John Weaver.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “And we get in trouble for a little while. But that was all that was the test, yeah, which is the day it goes bad, you give it up in any campaign and you double down and commit. Yeah. And everybody, not in our campaign, luckily it was a small number of us. And we were committed to the idea what we were doing. Including McCain.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “He was ready to go. And McCain is the firehouse Dalmatian. He hears the bell ring and it jumps on. Where's the fire? There's no stopping him. So he was fine. But it reminded me of being like the road manager for the Great Walenda. You know, the first three times you're shaking, you're watching him on the wire, you're feeling every gust of wind. You're praying. By show 48, you're like, Carl, get across the damn rope. We got a show in Albany in two hours. Chop, chop. You know, you kind of just go with it. And we had a couple of times where he'd have a gaffe.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Yeah. Oh, totally. Everybody forgets the early reviews are always terrible. That's so stupid. Washington experts, we're always wrong, by the way. You can just always hedge against that. But it was the theory was one, let McCain be McCain. He was very gregarious. He was very well informed. He was happy talking to the media. And two, if we were the campaign of Honesty and not the usual politics and not being afraid to take chances by actually believing in things that weren't always popular, then why are we afraid of the media? Let's show some of the same courage there with transparency. But I'll remember, I mean, in the staff, at first it was terrifying because it's not the normal culture.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “We went off and we lit a match, and it was McCain. He caught on, and we had a moment there where we might have been able to kind of heist the nomination. But as these things often go, in the end, the balance of resources kind of trips you up. But I was on that bus for about 120 days straight.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “He was a very formidable candidate. I have a weakness at the presidential level for long shots. And I believe presidential primary is a war you ought to totally follow your heart because it's an opportunity to find what the party's for, because that's what a nominee really does. And the presidency is so important. So I really thought McCain was great. I was not an anti-George W. guy. I thought he'd be a totally competent president. I thought he'd been a good governor of Texas. But McCain at a time post Clinton when people had so much cynicism about politics and the double speak and after the Lewinsky scandal, the lies, McCain was somebody who was seen as not only credentialed in something outside of politics from his kind of personal story, but he was willing to tilt against things. He was honest. And so...”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Forced out so much as I got a little bored with it, and I wanted to try other stuff. I've always been kind of a communications guy, so I do a lot of corporate strategy work. I work in high tech a lot because I'm a computer nerd. I've always been. And I used to love Castianos and I, he was a nerd too. We used to lug K-Pro computers around, which were as big as a damn sewing machine with five-inch floppy disk and a little CRT screen out of it. We thought we were so cool shoveling these things into airport overhead. So I really like technology and startups, and I just have wide interest. And yeah, I am the dues-paying member of two unions, whether I want to be or not, the Writers Guild out West and SAG After my union buddies back in Detroit are totally unimpressed of the Writers Guild. What happens in a strike, you get a paper cut?”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “That theory changed a little. We became to some extent more about turnout than persuasion. And it was a different theory of elections. And the old persuasion guys like me who are like, all right, let's go take their issues away, you know, let's fight in their backyard, kind of a different strategy, became out of vogue a little bit because a different crowd came in. And so I was always hard to kill, so to speak, because I had a good record and a lot of clients. So it didn't really affect me, but I would look at some of the managers and the parties, some of the mid-level operatives, and I'd be talking to them about this, and they'd fight back a little. And I'd say, look, I get all that. And it's important, but you went to a bad college. You've never been shown how to do it the other way where we go win the Illinois of the world, the Ohio's, the Michigans, the Pennsylvanians, all of which we used to have Republican governors in. And we've had some not so long ago currently, and some we do. So it did change a bit. So I didn't really got.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Yeah, yeah, and I'd been from the jeb silo, so I had never been part of kind of his operation, but it was a little uncomfortable. And most of my governor clients were for Governor Bush because they liked and respected him as a fellow governor. But my point about the party would be the”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Get I started doing this when I was 19, and I had a tremendous run. I got to work around the world. I got to do a lot of interesting campaigns. I had a huge win record. I always read on Twitter what a loser I am because of these presidentials, but I piled up a huge amount of statewide wins in California, the Arnold recall. I mean, I had a great run, but I found after... Particularly the 2000 race, but later.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Republican Party. It's a little in vogue, but you know, I'm not really doing the consulting and the straight politics anymore. I gave that up a while ago. I came out of retirement to help Jeb because I believed him a lot. And I like kind of the romantic long shot of trying to elect an inclusive conservative in the party and not a resentment candidate. We'd see how that worked out. We got thrown out.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Party committee. Yeah, out of the beltway. Guys who'd run a tough congressional or state senate race as the manager, you'd have the job. And I'd bring them to DC. And then they would back me up so I could put an operational guy in the campaign to do the Coca-Cola test. Well, we sell the syrup, not to water. In every country, it's going to be red and magically delicious and refreshing. Those are our rules. No. And they kind of be the cops to teach the locals what's going on. Because most of these guys doing like a challenger race. Maybe they have some political experience, but really they're sitting in a batting cage getting overwhelmed with the Ukrainian newspaper needs 2,000 for the endorsement or lose the whole Ukrainian vote. You know, the candidate spouse's best friend has written a radio. They're getting killed. So helping them narrow and focus and execute with some benchmarks. So the whole campaign is behind it. is the key. Otherwise, you're just putting GRPs up as something which can help, but it won't do.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “I always use the analogies like a caterpillar leg, and if all the legs aren't moving, we're not going to go anywhere. So my approach when I was doing statewide was I would never hire, and I'm not knocking them because there are a lot of good folks there, but I wouldn't hire guys out of the committees or out of DC. I'd hired guys who'd gone and run.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “We found out in our calculation, of course, we had our pejorative accountants who were strict constitutions, but we said it was a nickel a week. And so one of the things that's hardest, you know this, to do in a campaign, is when you have something that's levered that'll work, is commit everything to it. And so a Nickel-Aweek property taxes became the thing. The buttons were nickels, the ads were nickels. We just grabbed the nickel thing and ran with it. We were 20 points behind. And it clicked and away we went. And so I'm always a believer to try to find that thing that's true, that's credible and amplify it, but people ask me what strategy is. I say it's a list of things you're not going to do. So you pick the two or three things that will get you there that really work and then commit, even in the beginning, it's hard. Stupid nickel commercials, everybody knows you need a spot with the family and dog in it. You know, you idiot. And you kind of have to have the elephant skin to commit to your strategy and get stupid and execute it. And that's the hardest thing to do in a campaign.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “And Governor Blanchard was an effective Paul, he was ahead, and he'd done what a lot of incumbents do, which is he had a small tax reform that his PR guys had ballyhood and do.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “And it just happens to be an issue if we win, we break the back of the other guy. We got the state. So we went all in. And Jeb was committed and he was great at it. And they found us in their backyard fighting, which is not what they expected. They were working on how to take crime away from us or something. And so that's what I always would like to do. And I'd always try to align the media with some credibility to do that. As far as spots that kind of caught on, Angler in 1990 was a long shot.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “You know, I would say, I'll give you one that wasn't really a funny ad but just strategically. Again, I always like offense. And when Jeb Bush was looking at running for governor after he lost in 94 when everybody was winning, his passion was education. And normally you take a poll in the state and you'd find number one issue, jobs. Back then, crime was real high, taxes, good Republican issue. So we're going to make the campaign about Republican issues, try to create more Republicans. But Jeb's passion was education. So strategically, If we can take education away from the Dems, we're going to win the tax and crime war for free because we're Republicans. But can we do that credibly? Because that's what Jeff's passion about. He'll be good at it.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Come back. Walker's a guy who's figured that out, though. He's got, you know, that place has been a battleground, so it's more a hardened approach. But it was good training because when you wake up knowing if you don't change what's going to happen through persuasion and strategy, you're going to lose. The free vote equals loss. You learn stuff.”

    2016-04-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 44 - Mike Murphy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source